Open Source Kanban Board
A kanban board is honest in a way a status report is not: the columns make work-in-progress visible, so when one fills up the bottleneck is sitting on the wall instead of buried in a spreadsheet. The catch is that this category stretches from a single offline board on your laptop to full project platforms where kanban is one view among Gantt charts, sprints, and issue tracking, and the wrong end of that range is either too thin or too heavy for the job. The open source boards here give you that visual flow without metering per column or card, and they keep board state in storage you control, so a wall your team reads every morning cannot be paywalled or shut off from underneath it.
Plane
Open-source project management for tasks, cycles, docs, and triage, with cloud, self-hosted, and air-gapped options
Focalboard
Open source, self-hosted project management with Kanban boards for Trello, Notion, and Asana users
WeKan
Open-source kanban board with real-time updates and self-hosting options
OneDev
Self-hosted Git server with CI/CD, Kanban boards, package registries, and code search
PLANKA
Self-hosted Kanban board for agile project management with real-time collaboration
Leantime
Open source project management for non-project managers, built with ADHD, dyslexia, and autism in mind
Kanboard
Self-hosted Kanban project management software with a maintenance-mode release model
Anytype
Local-first, encrypted personal knowledge base for pages, tasks, wikis, journals, and custom data models
Kanri
Fully offline Kanban board app for desktop, with no account or internet connection needed
Our picks
Pick by scope, from a personal offline board to a full team platform.
Best self-hosted team board: PLANKA PLANKA is a focused, self-hosted kanban board for agile teams. It organizes work into projects, boards, lists, cards, and tasks with drag-and-drop and real-time updates across users, Markdown card descriptions, notifications through many providers, and OpenID Connect single sign-on. It deploys with Docker and keeps all project data on infrastructure you control.
Best full project platform: Plane Plane is the pick when kanban is only one view of a larger process. It tracks work items with rich text, files, and sub-properties, and adds cycles with burndown charts, modules to split big projects, filtered views, and real-time analytics. It runs on Plane Cloud, self-hosted, or fully air-gapped under AGPL.
Best personal offline board: Kanri Kanri is a desktop board for people who want to plan locally. Built with Tauri and Nuxt, it works fully offline with no account or internet connection, keeping boards on the device, and installs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is a clean, single-user tool rather than a hosted service.
Best for engineering teams: OneDev OneDev fits software teams that want planning next to their code. It is a self-hosted Git server with kanban boards and customizable issue workflows built in, alongside pull requests, code review, GUI-created CI/CD jobs, and package registries. Keeping cards in the same system as the repository avoids running a separate tracker.
Sizing a kanban board to your actual process
The commonest mistake is reaching for a heavy platform when you need a wall, or a bare wall when you need a system. At the light end, Kanri and WeKan give you fast, focused boards: Kanri runs entirely offline on the desktop with no account, and WeKan is a self-hosted board with cards, labels, checklists, custom fields, and real-time updates. At the other end, Plane and Leantime are full project tools where kanban is one view; Plane adds cycles, modules, and analytics, and Leantime spans kanban, Gantt, sprints, goals, and timesheets. Be honest about which end your team lives at before the tool decides for you.
Then decide where the board should live. PLANKA and WeKan are server-backed with real-time updates for a team, while Kanri and Anytype keep boards local, with Anytype adding end-to-end encryption and optional peer-to-peer sync. If you self-host, look at the database requirements, upgrade path, and whether backups capture attachments as well as card metadata. Check conflict handling and whether card history survives edits and moves, because a board with weak history is hard to trust once months of comments and archived cards pile up.
Finally, match the board to your collaboration boundary. Internal teams often need role-based permissions, SSO, and links to code and chat; PLANKA offers OpenID Connect single sign-on, and OneDev folds kanban into a self-hosted Git server so cards sit next to pull requests and CI. Whatever you pick, confirm exports cover cards, comments, checklists, and attachments in a usable format, since a board is hard to leave once years of work accumulate. One caution: Focalboard's standalone project is no longer maintained, so treat it as a reference rather than a fresh start.
Related categories
Frequently asked questions
When is a kanban board better than a plain task list?+
A kanban board earns its place when the state of work matters as much as the work itself. Columns show flow, work-in-progress limits expose overload, and cards make handoffs between people visible. A plain task list tracks ownership and due dates but usually hides queue buildup, so nobody notices that everything is stuck in review. If your real problem is too many parallel tasks or unclear status, the board is the better shape.
Which of these are simple boards and which are full project platforms?+
They split cleanly. Kanri, WeKan, PLANKA, and Kanboard are focused kanban boards for moving cards through columns. Plane, Leantime, and OneDev are broader platforms where kanban is one view: Plane adds cycles, modules, and analytics, Leantime layers on Gantt, sprints, goals, and timesheets, and OneDev bundles boards into a full Git and CI/CD server. Anytype is different again, a local-first knowledge base with a kanban block. Pick the scope your process actually needs.
How much do WIP limits, swimlanes, and custom fields matter?+
They matter if you use kanban as a process control system rather than a visual to-do list. Work-in-progress limits prevent overload, swimlanes separate classes of service, and custom fields track things like risk, size, or customer. Kanboard, for instance, enforces WIP limits per column and adds automatic actions. Start with the smallest set of fields that lets you make decisions, and add structure only when the board becomes ambiguous, since too many fields slow card movement.
Which support single sign-on and company authentication?+
Several are built for it. PLANKA supports single sign-on through OpenID Connect, Leantime offers LDAP and OIDC sign-in, and OneDev, as a full DevOps platform, handles enterprise authentication alongside its Git hosting. If your organization requires SSO, favor those and test the login flow and group mapping against your identity provider before rolling a board out to the whole team.
Can I run a kanban board fully offline?+
Yes, if you pick an offline-first app. Kanri is a desktop board built with Tauri that works with no account and no internet connection, keeping boards on the device. Anytype is local-first and end-to-end encrypted, storing data on your machine with optional peer-to-peer sync. Server-backed boards like PLANKA and WeKan instead expect a running server, so choose based on whether your board is personal and local or shared and always-on.
Which integrate with code hosting for engineering teams?+
OneDev is the tightest fit, because it is a self-hosted Git server with kanban built in, so cards live beside pull requests, code review, CI/CD jobs, and package registries with no second tool to sync. Plane also targets software teams with issues, cycles, and modules. The key question is whether the board stays the planning surface or becomes a duplicate tracker, so prefer integrations that link work across systems rather than copying every detail.
Are all of these boards actively maintained?+
Not equally, and it is worth checking before you commit. Focalboard's standalone project is no longer maintained, so it is better treated as a reference than a fresh deployment. Kanboard is deliberately in maintenance mode, receiving small fixes rather than major features, which is fine if you want something stable and minimal. Plane, PLANKA, Leantime, WeKan, and Anytype are all under active development if ongoing updates matter to you.